


for all that's left, and all that will be

by Kiiyoshi



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: A dash of cannibalism, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Blood and Gore, F/M, Immortality, like a smidgen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:07:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26641177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiiyoshi/pseuds/Kiiyoshi
Summary: It was one night that she appeared before him, a monster bound by nothing but the whims of her heart, eyes gleaming like a far-off dream he could not yet taste.
Relationships: Aglovale/Djeeta (Granblue Fantasy)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	for all that's left, and all that will be

_He sits at the peak, gazing downwards even though there’s nothing left to be gleaned past the fog that separates him from the rest of the world. Perhaps there’s a legend out there, one that claims the very stone he sits upon is the pedestal in which mortals can be closest to god. A throne, an altar--a fitting inheritance for the heir of a kingdom, but he is not alone._

_“You’ve made your decision then.”_

_Aglovale holds back a retort as he runs a finger down the azure inlay of his sword. He finds this fitting too, that the Almighty presents to him a “choice” when the circumstance that’s been thrust upon them is all but that._

_“I’ve cut a path,” he answers the voice of God. “They will arrive before the promised hour, and if you’ve done your part, this will be over soon.”_

_“Yes, but you will never know peace again.” The voice sees fit that he should be warned a second time._

_The wind that combs through his hair is both cold and familiar. He wonders if this too is something he will never remember._

_“So it may seem,” he simply replies._

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


“ _Aglovale--!_ ”

When no guard bothers to intercept the young lady who barrels through and rushes to throw her arms around the neck of the king, one may assume that this simply happens far too often to be a matter of concern. He understands this, but the Lord of Frost would have liked to see _some_ effort on their part even though very little can deter the gremlin hanging from his neck like some kind of long-armed, but otherwise harmless beast.

“Djeeta,” he says with the restraint and patience of royalty and a man who may not actually mind the lack of decorum she constantly subjects him to. “Haven’t you outgrown this behavior by now?”

Djeeta tilts her head, pure devilry dancing in her eyes. “Outgrown? How old do you think I am?”

It’s very like her to try his _own_ decorum in the absence of her own. Rather than take the bait, he sighs and in that moment, she seems to finally realize that they are not alone as she lets out a gasp that’s both too quiet and dramatic for his liking, as if she had just stumbled upon him having an affair and not a rather pertinent meeting with foreign ambassadors. “Oh!”

One who is not too familiar with the daily life within the castle of Wales clears his throat, uncertain as he is. “Um, my lord…”

“Do not mind her,” Aglovale replies as his hands return to the pen and paper before him. The authority his voice commands and the mirthful smile in that honeyed gaze as the king proceeds as if there had been no interruption silences any further discussion on the matter. “This is simply the price of her favor.” 

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


_He grips the warmth in his hands, relishing the way it oozes between his fingers as she lays gasping before him, her own hand clutching the spot where he had freed her innards from the confines of her body._

_Her flesh is black and gleaming as he brings it to his mouth. Monster that she is, he shall see to it that her flesh and blood welcomes the people into an age free of pestilence and their carnal imperfections. He sees what his selfish and foolish father was blind to. He will not fail where he had failed, dabbling in the affairs of demons._

_And he’ll not be swayed by doubt nor her hypocrisy._

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


He finds her not in her room, but sitting at the balcony of his bedchambers, feet dangling and fearless of the drop. It’s not unlike the night she first came to him all those years ago, smiling like the sweet devil in the stories his mother used to tell before she spirited him away and left him wanting, aching, and bumbling like the very fools he used to scorn.

The veil sways between them, white and translucent like a fog that separates him from the rest of the world. Somehow, it’s familiar and he reaches, hesitating, before he remembers he is not a man who hesitates in the wake of the object he desires most.

He wonders then if that is truly what she is to him.

“Good evening, _my lord_.” Her voice is a giggle and her body a sigh as he wraps his arms around her. The eyes of neither his guard nor his court can reach him here, and so he presses his lips to her neck as she leans back to greet him in turn.

She is as warm and pliant as always, but her gaze wanders far too much for his liking. He speaks and his voice alone commands her to return to the present, to the moment set aside for just the two of them. He will never understand the burden she bears, nor the history incomprehensible to his mortal time, but he will not have her taken from him by that which he cannot see.

“Do you still doubt me?” He feels the tremor that comes and goes and she melds to him as if she’s wanting as much as he, aching and bumbling as much as he, yet he knows this life of his is all but a drop in the ocean that is her time.

Her hands squeeze the fingers that trap them to her middle, and she doesn’t answer, not for a few moments at least.

“I can’t hide anything from you, can I,” she finally says, and he catches a glimpse of a smile before she turns to face him in earnest. “Being near you puts me at ease, Aglovale. That’s all.”

How is it that she can say one thing, while her eyes betray another? She’s smiling as she takes his face into her hands, thumbing the hollows of his cheeks with care so unlike her lighthearted daytime self, yet there’s sorrow in her eyes as she gazes deep into his own. Like this, he feels the weight of her years, and so he draws her closer once more, clutching her tighter to drive away what dares plague her in his presence.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


_She was still smiling, unassuming and naive to the blade he intended to separate her head from her body with. It’s her smile that keeps his sword in its sheath, leaving him with no other choice but to push her._

_But even after she falls, she doesn’t comprehend. She merely gazes up at him from the depths that will serve as her home for the rest of eternity, confused as he closes his hand, and with it, the last vestiges of daylight that she will ever see._

_He does not answer when she calls his name, voice muffled behind the stone. He does not answer when she starts to yell and beat against the prison he carved out of the earth for her, when she begins to finally realize what he intended for her from the start._

_When he returns months later to confirm her continued confinement, he does not answer the sobbing as he turns his back one last time._

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


She sleeps in longer and more often. Sometimes the breakfast he sends up to her room returns to the kitchen cold and untouched. Sometimes, he finds the opportunity between meetings and surveys to seat himself at her bedside, stroking her hair until he is inevitably called away for his next appointment.

“You’ve not been sleeping well,” he says when she wakes to greet him with that sleepy smile of hers. It’s more a statement than a question.

“Isn’t it normal to sleep in when you’re old?” She asks as she yawns, stretching against the length of her bed as the linen bunches around her feet and hands.

He tilts his head at that, deciding to humor her for the time-being. “Oh? Are you finally feeling your age after ten thousand years?”

She grins at him as she rolls onto her belly, feet untangling themselves from the sheets as she kicks them back and forth in the air. “And what if I am? Will you still love me when I’m gray and wrinkly?”

Not a fraction of a second passed when she gasps dramatically before he can answer, shooting up onto all fours like a startled cat before crying out, “Guards! _Guards!_ Help, the King of Wales is a shallow old man, and I share a bed with him--!”

She breaks into laughter when he tackles her, and she doesn’t stop laughing even as he pins her down by the wrists, his breath on her neck sending her into another fit.

\---

  
  


_He will never know why the man of his memories buried her, only that he did. He will never understand what drove him to betray the one who held nothing but trust and adoration for him when he sealed her away in a tomb of stone, only that he knew she was somebody he must find, if only to undo the wrong of a time beyond him._

_That is why he cannot tell her even when her hands are on his throat as she straddles him, her eyes wide with golden depths that used to smile in memories not his own now filled with rage and madness. How many years has it been since she was left to rot? A hundred? Two hundred? Her nails break the skin of his neck._

_She truly intends to kill him, but she does not get that chance when somebody pulls her off him. One moment, she is threatening his life, the next she is screaming hysterically, all four of her limbs thrashing about as she cries his name over and over._

_Help me, Aglovale. Please don’t put me back._

_It’s dark._

_It’s dark._

_It’s dark._

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


He startles awake to find his head in her lap, the paperwork he intended to take care of that evening neatly stacked off to the side.

She stops in the middle of stroking his hair and he has half a mind to ask her to continue before she peers down at him, expression soft and thankfully free of its usual mischief. “Another nightmare?”

“I don’t know,” he says and it’s the truth even though it’s not an answer he’d find himself pleased with. There is not much else he can say aside from the fact that he feels heavy, but perhaps that too is merely from the volume of his most recent responsibilities.

Against his body’s protests, he leaves the warmth of her lap to straighten himself and salvage whatever she may think of him now for falling asleep in the middle of his work. It wasn’t so long ago that he gently chided her for her own sleeping habits after all, although now that he remembers, he notices that she still looks so tired herself. 

“Djeeta.”

She blinks as if she’d been zoning out in that very moment before she offers him a sheepish smile. “Do you remember the things you dream about?”

He pauses to think--he owes her that amount of deliberation at the very least. “Not at all.”

Her expression softens further to the point that he thinks she may collapse on him right then and there, but she doesn’t. “Maybe that’s for the best,” she says quietly. “I love you, Aglovale.”

Something about her voice causes his chest to ache and he turns to her, but her arms are already around him as she draws him further and further from what he had originally intended to do.

“I’ll always love you.”

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


_Do not shed your tears._

_Those are the words he wants to say to her as she crawls to him, shaking as she pulls him onto her lap. The remains of his assailant lie in a crumpled heap not too far away, their blood the red that dyes her front._

_Why is it only when he draws his last breaths does he remember? He called her monster, buried her, betrayed her, and yet even now she still sheds tears over him, begging him not to leave even though he had already left her so many times before._

_There were lives in which he despised her, yet she loves him still. Even when he loves her back, he serves as little more than a cog in the machine that torments her._

_Why is it that even when she chooses him, he cannot make her happy?_

_It’s frustrating… so frustrating he can almost cry. The next life, and the next life, and the life after that--how many more centuries must he continue like this?_

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


“Please don’t go.”

She stands before him, her voice so soft that it stops him in his tracks even though he had resolved to proceed regardless of her wishes.

When he ascended the throne, he promised to grant whatever she asked of him as long as it was within his power. Even if it were not, he would find a way, he had assured her at the time.

But even this simple request is beyond him. Peace in the continent rests on the shoulders of this treaty, one he must sign by his own hand in a foreign kingdom that had desired his head not so long ago. He understands, but there are things a king of his people will never be able to skirt around.

“Djeeta,” he says, pausing to see if she will relent. She does not. “You vowed not to interfere with how I rule this kingdom.”

He catches the way she grits her teeth. “It’s dangerous,” she says, ignoring him. “Why can’t you send an envoy or something instead?”

“Oh?” He lifts his chin. “Is the all-benevolent goddess indulging in favoritism? If it’s dangerous, who shall I send in my stead?”

He knows he is being unfair, but there are times when he finds her hypocrisy insufferable. Even as she closes her fists, frustration welling in her eyes, he is far more aware of the things she despises than she is of him

How has she not realized yet how self-centered humans are?

“Don’t call me that,” she replies, hands opening and closing at her side. “I can’t always protect you when you do things like this.”

Aglovale feels something twitch in his temple, but he brushes it aside. “I was but a boy when you promised to stay by my side. It is your prerogative to decide if you will keep your word or not, but I am not so small and fragile as to require your protection.”

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


_Long time ago, there lived a demon. It had fur the color of wheat, and eyes the color of honey. It stalked the shadows of royal families, whispering sweet words into their ears as it promised glory and wealth and any wish in exchange for their souls, but regardless if the price was paid or not, nothing but ruin would await their bloodlines._

_That was the story his mother used to tell him and his brothers. It was merely a fairy tale that simply served to warn children about the common dangers of the world. He had burned the lessons deep into his mind out of mere love for his mother, and yet he still found himself reaching for the woman who sat on the edge of his balcony, veil dancing between them in the night breeze._

_“Did I wake you?” She asked him, lips turned in a gentle smile. “You can go back to sleep, I’ll be gone before you know it.”_

_“Are you here for my soul?” He blurted without any of the fear that should be expected of him. “Are you here to steal me away?”_

_The woman grinned, but she didn’t have the fangs of the demon from the story. Her hair gleamed silver and her eyes caught the moonlight in the way honey tea in a glass cup would catch the sun, but the resemblance stopped there._

_He could not think of her as anything else but “beautiful”._

_“Now why in the world would I do any of that?”_

_Aglovale clutched his sleeve, stepping closer to the threshold. “Why are you here then? If you don’t tell me, I’ll call the guards.”_

_Amusement danced across her features instead of fear, but she obliged him nonetheless. “I just thought I could finally find peace if I saw you safe and happy in this life.”_

_She moved as if to jump, and without thinking or any regard for his own safety, Aglovale stumbled forward to take hold of her._

  
  


_\---_

  
  


She lays in his arms in pieces, parts of her scattered about as the pool of crimson grows from beneath them. Survivors of the blast who catch sight of her flesh knitting back together and her bones twisting and snapping back into place run away, screaming _monster_ at the top of their lungs.

Djeeta smiles up at him, but there is no end to the blood that dribbles from her mouth, and her wounds close far slower than they should.

“I’m... sorry.”

“ _Enough,_ ” he whispers harshly, gripping her arm and holding it in place until it reconnects with her body. “We’ll return to Wales at once and I will see to it that you are properly tended to. The people will know what you have done here for their king and they will not revile you. You needn’t fear.”

A hand fumbles blindly, one in which he grasps.

“I’m sleepy, Aglo...” Her head turns slightly while she speaks as if she did not hear him. “I... I really wanted to stay awake longer, but... but as long as you're _safe_...”

Her voice trembles and he finds himself at a loss for words. Why does she speak as if this is goodbye? Is she not immortal? Is she not to remain here by his side until the end of his days? “ _What drivel are you saying now?_ ”

She still smiles at him even though her eyes seem to blur. “It… It was always the other way around.” Her smile falters as she gasps, tears trickling down the sides of her face. “It’s not… It’s not revenge. I’m sorry, Aglo… it hurts… it hurts when you look at me like that…”

He abandons his image and his decorum as he brings her closer, but even when her body is whole again, her eyelids continue to drift lower and lower as realization dawns on him. “ _Don’t sleep!”_ He shouts, shaking her. “ _I am your king and I order you not to sleep--!”_

Her head rolls against his chest and the grip on his hand laxes. “I was… happy,” she murmurs, eyes unseeing. “So happy I... I wanted to steal you away far... from... here...”

It is far too late for that. Has she not realized? Has she not realized that she had already taken him?

“My soul…” He says, pressing his forehead to her breast. “My soul in exchange for any wish, is that not right?”

He whispers it against where her heart lies, but Djeeta does not answer.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


_“One day, I won’t be here anymore.”_

_Aglovale shut the book he was reciting from. He was not angry. He was not upset, but he would prefer if those who shared his company would keep to their word. “That is not what you promised.”_

_“I promised to watch over you,” Djeeta replied. “And I always will, even if you can’t see me.”_

_“Don’t speak as if you can die,” he said. “You will serve me, and you will be at my side when I am crowned King of Wales.”_

_She smiled placidly even though from her point of view, she must think that she was being reprimanded by a child. “When you’re king, everyone else will see that I haven’t aged a day. There are people who think they can take my power for themselves, and they’ll come for my body. Or maybe they’ll think of burying me in order to save you from that honey-eyed demon.”_

_He stood up rather abruptly, chair almost toppling with his hand splayed over his chest. “Then I’ll protect you--is that not my duty? When I am king, you will know no fear nor suffering!”_

_He didn’t understand why in that moment, she looked both so happy and sad before she closed the distance between them to take his face into her hands. There was not much he understood in all his naivety, only that he simply wished to protect her from the bottom of his heart._

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


He buries her on a bluff that is neither the highest nor the lowest in the country, but it is one that faces the rising sun that greets the Kingdom of Wales every dawn. She brought him here once way back when, carrying his adolescent body in her arms after she had saved him from falling to his death when he so foolishly leapt after her.

He did not realize at the time, but she was immortal, and she remains immortal. She does not die, but she sleeps, and sometimes she may sleep for hundreds of years, uninterrupted.

“You’ll find your rest here where it’s quiet.”

Her expression remains peaceful as she lies in the open casket he had chosen for her. She’ll not wake in another prison, but in their secret place overlooking the kingdom he will build to last. Wales is but a single drop, his life is but a single drop, but when she opens her eyes, perhaps she will think of him, and perhaps even after a thousand years when her heart will surely belong to another, she will remember that he too was somebody who loved her.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is but a slice of a much bigger convoluted pie :D


End file.
